Ant Group to issue biggest IPO in the history of capitalism; Jack Ma in course to become a Mega Billionaire

Chinese billionaire, business magnate, investor, and philanthropist Jack Ma is making history again with the Ant IPO and getting even more wealthy while doing it.

Jack Ma, the former English teacher who co-founded Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. with $60,000, is set to become the world’s 11th richest person after Ant Group Co. priced shares for a record initial public offering. Jack Ma's Ant Group Cp. will raise $34.5 billion through a dual IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong. This is the biggest IPO in the history of mankind.

The IPO has attracted interest from some of the world’s biggest money managers and individual investors in China. In the preliminary price consultation, institutional investors subscribed for over 76 billion shares, more than 284 times the initial offline offering tranche, according to Ant’s Shanghai offering announcement, as reported by Bloomberg.

Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian oil company had the record of being the largest IPO as of now. The oil titan had raised $29 billion that had temporarily established it as the world's highest-valued company.

The agreement called the greenshoe options allows Ant Group Co. to raise additional capital if investor demand persists. Ant can raise another $5.2 billion across both exchanges through the over-allotment options.

Bloomberg said at least 18 other people will become billionaires from the IPO, including director Lucy Peng, the biggest individual Ant owner after Ma, and chairman Eric Jing.

However, it should be noted that not all speculators are optimistic about the company. Some are of the opinion that a huge craze for the IPO shares does not necessarily translate to a sound future of the company. Financial regulation in China can be notoriously difficult to navigate. As Ant has itself stated in the prospectus, “These laws, rules, and regulations are highly complex, continuously evolving and could change or be reinterpreted to be burdensome or difficult to comply with.”

Furthermore, competition is piling in for the company. Ant’s market share of the Chinese mobile payments business, once around 75%, has dropped to about 55%. There are also questions whether the technology on which the company relies is sustainable. Even Ant has cautioned that its lending algorithms have yet to be fully tested in a credit cycle.

Formerly known as Ant Financial and Alipay, Ant Group is an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group. Ant began when Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. launched the Alipay payments app in 2004 for buyers and sellers on Ma’s e-commerce website.

In 2013, they were allowed to save money and earn interest on the balances stored on their accounts. The firm then started offering credit to small businesses, branching out from its consumer-finance focus, and eventually expanded to services such as blockchain, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.